Barroso wants UK rebate revision

Friday, 20 May 2005 12:00 AM

The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has called for a revision of Britain's EU rebate.

Mr Barroso, who was in London for a meeting with Tony Blair, said Britain was now a more prosperous country than in 1984 when Margaret Thatcher secured the rebate.

He said it was not fair for Bulgaria and Romania to be paying more than Britain, which receives a rebate of around £3 billion per year.

"Britain is no longer in the situation that it was 20 years ago. Britain is much more prosperous than it was 20 years ago, and above all the European Union has changed," he said.

Britain's rebate has been in the spotlight this week with EU finance ministers set to discuss the EU budget for the period 2007 - 2013.

Luxembourg, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, has put forward a budget equivalent to 1.1 per cent of member states' GDP.

Mr Barroso is unhappy with the proposals because they will impact the EU's goals of helping poorer EU regions and providing foreign aid. He would like to see a budget nearer to 1.26 per cent of GDP.

EU ministers are meeting in Brussels on Sunday in an attempt to prepare the groundwork for an agreement at an EU summit in June.

However, the UK Government is standing firm on the rebate ahead of this meeting, insisting that it was "entirely justified".

A Downing Street spokesman said: "We believe that the rebate is fully justified, we will argue that case in Europe, just as we have argued it before. We pay more in terms of other countries.

"We will continue to argue that given the balance of the resources and the payments that countries make, that the UK rebate is justified, and that remains our position."

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